<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div style="RIGHT: auto">Hey everyone,</div>
<div style="RIGHT: auto"> Ones thing Ive noticed at NB more recently is a lot of "recycled hack goods" disappearing from the shelves in very large quantities. I'm wondering if someone is trying to be a good semaritan by recycling them (?) It would be nice to keep this stuff at NB for projects though. Was helping some people 2 days ago build a robot and there were ZERO batteries to be found at NB (??) That got me thinking more about the disappearing stuff in recent months:</div>
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<div style="RIGHT: auto">- Old Cell phones (we had a massive bin of these)</div>
<div style="RIGHT: auto">- Batteries (Jake donated a massive bin of great Laptop batteries and there was also a crate of lead acids. The former were later were def on their way out though...)</div>
<div style="RIGHT: auto">- Ethernet cables (there was a brown crate (closed lid type) with a thousand of these, now all gone?)</div>
<div style="RIGHT: auto">- PCB/motherboard scrap (had 4 bins of these at one point and it was GREAT for part pulling. Someone 'recycled' these a while ago I think..)</div>
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<div style="RIGHT: auto">Anyway, maybe at a future meeting we could talk about hack stuff that is good for the space versus trash to get rid of. Or I could volunteer to help sort if someone wants to work on this. It is one of the most useful things about the space I think to have this stuff around for building awesome projects. I'll give one example: During a Linux class last week someone needed a 12v to 5v stepdown for the new Rasberry Pi. He was going to go spend $$ at the store for something in a few days and really didn't know what was needed. So we..</div>
<div style="RIGHT: auto">-used the whiteboard to draw out and explain DC DC v. LDO voltage circuits </div>
<div style="RIGHT: auto">and </div>
<div style="RIGHT: auto">-pulled a ancient Linksys router from the "router and networking" scrap bin...the old mother board had an entire DC-DC converter circuit for 12v to 5v, 12v to 3.3v, and another one...all high efficiendy and rated >1.9A output! (we checked the datasheet online)...all for free and reusing e-waste AND educating!<VAR id=yui-ie-cursor></VAR></div>
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<div style="RIGHT: auto">Just one example of why NB and motherboard scrap is awesome :)</div>
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<div style="RIGHT: auto">Zach</div></div></body></html>